


Fatigues

by sterlinglee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Child Dean, Gen, toy soldiers and extended metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlinglee/pseuds/sterlinglee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean was made a soldier on the road, stitched together tired in his bones.  His father did this to him before he understood how to choose, and it's been so long now that he's not sure if it matters.  Not really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fatigues

Dean Winchester has learned how to live from one exhaustion to the next. 

_“Go, Dean, now! Take your brother and run!”_

Dean is four years old and he is learning what it is to be without sleep, without a nightlight or a drink of water or the sweetness of the lie, _“angels are watching over you.”_ He is dimly aware that his father wants something from him. 

He wakes on a dead stretch of road somewhere in Nebraska, cradled by the backseat of the Impala. Not for any sound or sudden movement—John drives in silence. Maybe some part of Dean knows, already, that he’s better off awake and watchful than asleep. Asleep is ignorant, dangerous. The time for resting has passed. 

He turns his head just a little to the left to look at Sam. His brother is a small thing, soft and distant with sleep. No weight at all, really. John looks at him strangely sometimes, and then turns to Dean and says, “You keep an eye on your brother, you hear?”

Dean is eight years old and he knows what a gun can do. He knows his father uses them—John Winchester is going to hunt down every monster in America, it seems like. He does not stop, he does not rest, and Dean hopes that someday he’ll be that strong. But a small part of him speaks up, saying, _it seems like a lot of work._

Already, John is tired, and the price is taken out of his sons.

Dean is twelve years old and he can hold a rifle, and he knows his duty. Keep Sammy, watch Sammy, carry Sammy and put him back together when he flies apart. Dean shoulders the burden, because he’s twelve and wants to be a man. This is what he’s here for. Hasn’t he always been this good soldier, then? 

It’s been so long that he can’t quite remember.

“Wait here. No matter what you hear or see, don’t leave the car. If I’m not back in two hours, what do you do?”

“Phone Bobby,” both boys chorus. And their father is gone, jogging away over a cracked brown mile of dry earth with a shotgun in his hand.

Dean and Sam march their toy army men over the back seat of the Impala, and watch the clock. Sam’s chubby kid fingers slip on the hard plastic. The point is to line them up and knock them down. He doesn’t have Dean’s patience for the war games, though, and soon enough he’s trying to cram little soldiers wherever he can fit them.

John is not back in two hours. Dean calls Bobby, who calls Rufus, who speeds down from Waco to bail John out. Dean knows his duty. He watches Sam, and doesn’t sleep until his father gets back.

Dean is fourteen, seventeen, nineteen years old. He knows guns and fire and knives, and he thinks he might know what it is to be a man. _Line them up and knock them down._ John Winchester is tired, but his hands are still strong. He uses them to do what is necessary.

He pours Dean into the mold all rigid and faceless, and plants his feet in a ready stance on a little pedestal. He puts a gun in his hand and brands an order on his heart. He dresses him in the hunter’s uniform: dark greens and blues and grays. Faded plaids that will break up his outline in the dark. And Dean stands ramrod straight under the fierce, loving, selfish hand of his Maker.

He shoulders his rifle, and over the sound of gunshots he can no longer hear the voice of his boy-self, saying, _but isn’t it a lot of work?_ He learns every shade of weariness a man can feel, and how to fit his life into the spaces between. And he is tired, tired. 

But isn’t that part of being a soldier, then? This is just how it goes, beyond his power to change. So why bother himself with it—it’s been so long. He can’t quite remember.


End file.
